We arrived in Port Sidney Marina just after checking time, with a long list of things to do, groceries and hardware to buy. At first, we'd reserved the marina for 2 nights, but extended our stay to a third, then a fourth night to cope with all the things we had to do, plus give us a little time off.
Di went on a number of groceries expeditions and not seeing her come back for a while at first, I thought she'd disappeared. Shopping in a new place is always a little confusing as very few of the items are familiar, so you find yourself checking the labels a lot more, and just hunting around.
3 or 4 trips back and forth over a couple of days filled the boat with a lot of long term supplies. We haven't figured an exact itinerary yet as we both enjoy the freedom of going at our own pace, and do not feel we are in a rush to do anything. This is not a race of how many islands can we see this summer, but our daily normal life. If we like a place, we'll stay. If we have reason to go, we pick up the anchor and go to the next place.
So we ended up with supplies in abundance, littering about the whole salon in the boat. Tomatoes, corn, beans,rice, and so much more seemingly ready to jump at us from every corner of the boat. A little overwhelming at first as we'd taken control of "stuff" on the boat, and now were back again to having "stuff" (cans and more) laying around the boat. Di did a great job over the next few days of creating a spreadsheet of our provisions and stowing them away. A slow process at first, but knowing what we have and where (we have many hidden deep places on board), will be very useful in the future. Also, we hope it'll get us an idea of what we use and what we don't, and how long things last. That should make provisioning for long passages much easier and less of a guess.
I have no idea how much we have on board, but judging by the size of the bills, I'd estimate we have about a couple of months or more, except of course for fresh food and produces.
Of course -like always- all the work, provisioning and tinkering was scheduled around Princess' numerous walks. A husky doesn't wait and doesn't stay at rest for very long.
Sidney is a very pleasant town to walk around, with nice shops, a long waterfront pathway, and plenty of small parks for Princess to stretch her legs out too.
Locals seem to put a lot of effort into their gardens and flowers are everywhere. Even the marina piling have beautiful hanging flower baskets.
Another highlight of Sidney was dinner at the local pub across the marina. They let us keep Princess on the other side of the patio's fence, right next to us, and we enjoyed a delicious butter chicken poutine. Can't stay in Canada without eating a poutine once in a while, and this one was spectacular. Followed by a peanut butter burger and a creme brulee, the evening felt like a special treat after all these days at anchor.
A successful stop in a pleasant place. We eventually won the war against the tomatoes and other cans, and sailed for Montague Harbour so I could show Di this wonderful place.